Dravid is India’s greatest

Sachin Tendulkar fans won’t like this. Even as the dust settles around the ICC ratings that did not rate Tendulkar too highly, an in-depth study into the Top 20 Indian Test cricketers of all time puts him at No 4. Rahul Dravid, 36, is No. 1 and when you look at the rationale you will struggle to disagree. When you take into account his contribution in Test matches won, especially overseas, there’s a lot going for him. The wall stands tallODI: Top 4 countries

Sachin Tendulkar fans won’t like this. Even as the dust settles around the ICC ratings that did not rate Tendulkar too highly, an in-depth study into the Top 20 Indian Test cricketers of all time puts him at No. 4.

Rahul Dravid, 36, is No. 1 and when you look at the rationale you will struggle to disagree. When you take into account his contribution in Test matches won, especially overseas, there’s a lot going for him.

The exercise, dubbed the Holding Willey Report, resulted in more than 30,000 pages of data being generated.

Hindustan Times has access to this study and the results are bound to spark off a debate.

What makes this exercise different are the parameters the players were judged on (see graphic).

The second aspect that differentiates the study from others is that the logic is completely transparent. Whether you agree with the findings or not, you'll know how they were arrived at.

Jaideep Varma, one of the architects of the study, said the findings were a bit unexpected even for them: “This combination of parameters determines a player’s value in a collective context, which is bizarrely missing in evaluations about cricketers, especially in India where individual records and milestones get more attention than they sometimes deserve.”